Dr. Erin Kobetz serves in multiple roles at the University of Miami. As the first Chief Health Equity Officer and Vice President for Health Equity, she is responsible for developing novel strategies to reduce persistent health disparities and increase access to quality healthcare for South Florida. As the Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (Sylvester), she oversees center-wide community outreach and engagement efforts, leading programs that deliver Sylvester’s resources to diverse and underserved communities across South Florida, including the Game Changer mobile clinics, which mitigate barriers by directly bringing cancer screenings, health information, and research opportunities to individuals in the catchment areas. Additionally, Dr. Kobetz is the Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) and Co-Director of the University of Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). She has co-led CTSI programs focusing on multidisciplinary team science and community and stakeholder engagement since the CTSI’s first grant cycle. Dr. Kobetz is a Tenured Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Public Health Sciences, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at UM’s Miller School of Medicine and a recipient of the John K. and Judy H. Schulte Senior Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.
She earned a master’s in public health from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University (1999) and joined the University of Miami after completing her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Public Health (2004). Soon after, Dr. Kobetz established Patnè en Aksyon (Partners in Action), the University’s first-ever community-academic partnership in Little Haiti, the largest enclave of Haitian settlement outside of Haiti, and remains committed to integrating diverse stakeholders into the translational research continuum. As part of her community-based research program, Dr. Kobetz has partnered with firefighters – characterized by excess cancer risk – and leads the Firefighter Cancer Initiative (FCI), a university-wide interdisciplinary program to address this disparity. Such efforts have been locally, regionally, and nationally recognized and serve as an important approach to developing new community-based models for cancer prevention and achieving sustainable health and social change in underserved communities.
